What Is Love’s Work? Introducing Gillian Rose’s Social Philosophy
A dinner reading group for students and young professionals in the Bay Area.
Time & Location
Jan 24, 2023, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM PST
Zephyr Institute, 560 College Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA
About the Event
Since her death at the age of 48 in 1995, the English philosopher Gillian Rose’s thought has continued to grow in prominence and influence among philosophers, theologians, and culture critics. Over her career, Rose launched a comprehensive critique of modernity, philosophy, sociology, and education from an unrepentantly Hegelian perspective, tempered by her profound engagement with Jewish and Christian thought, especially Soren Kierkegaard. Rose argued that Marxism, and the later turn toward Postmodernism represented by Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault, were incapable of healing the rupture of facts and values that has shackled western thought since Kant. Only Hegel, who taught that the Absolute can be thought, held out the possibility, in Rose’s words, of bringing the soul and the city back together and offering a viable political theology. A notoriously difficult writer, Rose wrote her most accessible, yet deceptively profound, book at the end of her life while she was dying of cancer: her philosophical memoir, Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life. In this reading group, we will read Love’s Work and carefully chosen excerpts from her other works, and think together about the soul, the city, and the love of wisdom.
Discussions will be led by Joe Amato (Stanford University).
If you would like a copy of Love's Work, please contact Zephyr.
Dates
Tuesday, January 17th, 530-7PM: An Introduction to Love's Work
Tuesday, January 24th, 530-7PM: Love's Work: Soulcraft
Tuesday, January 31st, 530-7PM: Love's Work: Statecraft
Course Outline
I. An Introduction to Love’s Work
Reading Assignments:
Rose, Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life
II. Love’s Work: Soulcraft
Reading Assignments:
Rose, Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life
RTÉ Radio Interview, Parts 1 and 2
https://gillianrose.org/resources/the-rte-interview/
Rose, Paradiso, selections
- Edna or the Song of Songs: Mystical Theology, 15–36
- Dr Grove or Goodness: Hellenism, 42–47
Optional Further Readings:
Rose, Dialectic of Nihilism, selection
- Conclusion, 208–212
Rose, Judaism and Modernity, selection
- Preface, v–viii
III. Love’s Work: Statecraft
Reading Assignments:
Rose, Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life
Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law, selection
- Athens and Jerusalem: a tale of three cities, 15–39
Optional Further Readings:
Rose, The Broken Middle, selection
- New Jerusalem Old Athens: The Holy Middle, 277, 289–296
Rose, Hegel contra Sociology, selection
- VII. With What Must the Science End?, 218–226
Readings
All mandatory readings, with the exception of Love’s Work: A Reckoning with Life, can be found HERE.
All optional further readings can be found HERE.
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Speaker
J.G. Amato (PhD candidate, Early Modern European History) is a dissertation prize fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and has been awarded grants and fellowships from the US Fulbright Commission, the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, DC, Stanford University, and the University of Notre Dame.